Let's start with the figures, and then let's talk about why the figures are a little bit of a trap.
City of Los Angeles: median sale price around $1,055,000 for the three months ending in August, down roughly 1.4% year over year, about $621 per square foot, with a median of about 52 days on market.
Los Angeles County: median around $913,000 to $922,000 depending on the window, roughly flat to slightly up year over year, around $588 to $590 per square foot, about 49 to 52 days on market. There were 4,157 county sales in September, down from 4,506 a year earlier.
Supply is still tight. Mid-year the market was running about 4.3 months of supply, below the five to six months that usually signals balance.
The accurate one-sentence description of this market is "expensive and flat." Not crashing. Not surging. Flat, with fewer transactions than last year and homes taking about the same time to sell.
Why the median is lying to you a little
A median is the middle sale. It moves when the mix of what sells changes, not only when values change.
Right now the mix is changing. The high end has gotten structurally more expensive to transact inside City of LA because of ULA. Fewer very large sales closing inside city limits drags the city median down without a single house actually being worth less. Meanwhile county numbers get pulled by everything from Lancaster to Malibu, a spread of roughly three million dollars in median price inside one data set.
Break it down further and single-family and condos are not moving together. Across the broader LA market the median single-family price has been up slightly year over year while the median condo price has been down. Condos have been the soft spot for a while, and in buildings where HOA dues have climbed on insurance and deferred maintenance, "soft" is generous.
So when a client sends you a headline saying LA prices are down, the right answer is not yes or no. The right answer is "down in which product type, in which submarket, measured against what."
What this looks like on the ground
Fifty-two days on market means correctly priced homes still sell on a normal timeline. It does not mean everything sells. It means the market has become patient, and patience is brutal to overpriced listings. The ones sitting at ninety and a hundred and twenty days are not victims of the market. They were priced in a different one.
Inventory below balance means buyers still have less selection than they would like, which is why well-presented homes in desirable pockets still see competition while the merely adequate sit. The gap between a great listing and an average listing is wider in a flat market than in a hot one. In 2021 bad marketing was invisible because everything sold. It is extremely visible now.
How to use this with clients
With sellers: lead with days on market and the mix problem, not with the median. "Homes like yours, in this pocket, priced correctly, are going in about seven weeks" is a useful sentence. "The LA median is down 1.4%" is not.
With buyers: this is the most reasonable market in several years. Inventory is better than it has been, competition is real but survivable, and sellers are negotiating. That is a genuinely better position than 2021, and buyers who have been waiting for a crash have now been waiting through two years of flat.
With both: stop quoting county numbers to city clients. They are different markets with a hundred-thousand-dollar gap in the median, and the credibility you lose when a client checks is not worth the convenience.
Figures drawn from Redfin, Realtor.com and public market reporting as of October 2026. Market data moves. Verify before relying on it in a client presentation.
